Below lies the fourth chapter of the full-length novel, The Girl with the Strawberry Eyes. If you’ve not read the first four parts, I strongly suggest you go back and do so. You’ve the option of choosing either an EPUB file or a PDF, or reading the work in the space below. New chapters will be added every Wednesday. Cheers and Happy Reading.
The Genius
Paginelle hadn’t even completely opened the front door before her father’s rumbling baritone thundered from deep inside of the dwelling: “You’re early. Why are you early?”
Paginelle had to think a little before answering. “Because … because I wasn’t needed.”
The next few seconds of silence fell like hammer blows. Then: “You were fired?”
“N-no, I wasn’t fired,” Paginelle stammered. “I just, um … I just wasn’t needed—”
“I’ve stressed,” her father cut in, “the importance of that job, have I not? I’ve reiterated the necessity of that job, have I not?”
Paginelle turned to Frost and said, almost pleadingly, “I need to go explain.”
“Then I shall come with you,” said Frost, straightening a little.
“You really don’t have to,” Paginelle whispered. “In fact, it would be a lot better if you didn’t.”
“But I can help!” Frost insisted. “If nothing else, I can serve as a visual aid. Do you know how many Vauxhall’s girls would willingly reduce themselves to the role of visual aid? I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t many.”
“Paginelle?” came her father’s voice. “What are you still doing over there?”
Paginelle cleared her throat. “I—”
“Are you talking to yourself? Lord Almighty, child, don’t tell me you’ve already cracked.”
Paginelle leveled a finger at Frost’s chest. “You stay here.” And then, because she remembered that it was Frost’s father who handed her a check every week: “Um, please.”
Before Frost could utter a word of protest, Paginelle spun on her heels and hurried towards the sound of her father’s voice.
Whenever she moved through house, she felt like Theseus navigating the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on Crete. This was, admittedly, a rather lofty reference, but it was, she figured, worlds better than comparing herself to a rat trapped in a maze. Anyhow, ‘labyrinthine’ was the perfect word to describe the little house because almost every square inch of it was occupied by a tower of books. Almost every one of these volumes was beaten and bent out of shape, with pages the color of plaque-ridden teeth, and spines knotty with creases. They had been thrown haphazardly on top of one another and seemed to be held in place only by years’ and years’ worth of dust.
Where there weren’t towers of books, there were towers of notebooks—each swollen by thousands of lines of notes and hundreds of drawings. Where there weren’t towers of books or notebooks, there were bits and pieces of odd-looking machinery. Some of it was really nothing more than little bits and pieces; some of it was full machines that had done nothing besides collect rust and dust, and stubbornly refuse to function. Everything else in the house was almost too depressing to mention: the ceiling sagged, all of the furniture had been slapped together with misshapen, badly angled wood, and large chunks of floor and wall were missing—the result of countless experiments that had ended in unplanned explosions. A chroppet as tall and wide as an orangutan stood in one corner, its eyes having fallen dark years ago. Furthermore, it had long-since been stripped of any useful parts.
A number of dim, amber-hued lamps scattered about on crooked tables gave the house the air of an attic. The place certainly was as cold as an attic at times, as none of the windows closed properly. Every so often, Paginelle, while in the midst of cleaning, would find small black tulips growing from between the floorboards, or from a random crack in the wall, or perhaps from the middle of some long-neglected book. She figured these were the remnants of one of her father’s many failed projects, and tended to leave them alone. It was something of a pleasure finding the things, actually, as they seemed to grow in spite of the cold and misery and gloom.
And finally, at the end of it all, behind the maze of his making, was Paginelle’s father. Looks-wise, father and daughter couldn’t appear any more different. Paginelle was caught right in the middle of a French-Senegalese father and a Tahitian mother: pale brown skin, bushels of long, curly, black hair, full brown lips and large eyes that made her look at least a year or two younger than she actually was. She almost always wore a white button-front shirt with a rounded Peter Pan collar, a black wool sweater, some fashion of checkered plaid skirt, white tights and red buckle shoes. And while it couldn’t be avoided, how worn her clothing had become in the preceding years (there were, for example, more than a few holes hidden within the black of her sweater), she at least tried to keep everything neat, and everyday made an effort to look presentable. Her father, on the other hand … well, he wasn’t that.
His hair was, without fail, a cloudy, tangled mess of graying black interwoven with streaks of white; his circle-framed glasses always sat crookedly on his nose; a few layers of white-speckled stubble was always slathered across his chin. His sweater vests were always of faded burgundies, browns and mustards, and were more loose threads than anything else. And the bow ties he insisted on wearing to “work” everyday? Little more than spotty rags.
At the moment, he sat hunched over a notebook splayed open on one of his rickety tables. The pages of the notebook were filled with tiny black scribblings; the midnight blue fountain pen in his hand dripped and quivered, and hovered hungrily over the page.
Standing obediently next to the table was a tall, thin man in a heather-green cardigan, who sported a bald spot as bold as a monk’s tonsure, and eyes like those of an intelligent rabbit. This was Dicky Braites—a failed Scholar who had fallen in love with an academic article Paginelle’s father had written some years ago, and had decided to become an acolyte ever since.
Dickey’s rabbity eyes brightened when he saw Paginelle. “Paginelle,” he said breathlessly. “You’re home early!”
“We’ve already established this, Dicky,” Paginelle’s father grumbled. “What have I told you about spouting pointless sentences?”
Dicky looked at his shoes and mumbled, “Sorry, sir.” But then he looked at Paginelle and brightened again. “Hey, uh, do you want to know what Fred Astaire really thought about Ginger Rogers?” Dicky was, for whatever reason, always spouting trivial gobbets about Old Hollywood. Perhaps he thought Paginelle would be impressed by his knowledge. Unfortunately for him, she never was.
“Nobody cares, Dicky,” said Paginelle’s father. “Go fetch me a fresh bottle of ink.”
“Right away, sir,” Dicky said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Oh! But your old bottle isn’t finished yet—”
“Go get a fresh bottle anyway,” Paginelle’s father snapped. “Good Lord, man, learn how to take a hint.” And after Dicky had shuffled off, her father muttered, “Creepy moron.” He turned to Paginelle and said, in French, “Explain yourself. Why were you fired?”
“I wasn’t fired, Papa,” Paginelle said, also in French. “There was nothing for me to do today, so I was allowed to come home early. That’s all this is.”
Her father lifted his chin. “You’re lying.”
“I am not, Papa! Why would I lie?”
“Because you fear my wrath,” her father said coolly. “As you well should. Did I not tell you that you must do everything in your power to keep that job? The hours were perfect for us. As was the compensation. Now you will have to find a common job and work alongside common children. You know what that means, do you not? They’re going to rot your mind with their stupidity and pubescent antics. So much so that you’ll become as common as them before long! And then, I’m afraid, there’s going to be real trouble between us, my girl, because ours is not—and never will be—a home meant for common people.”
“You know, you could always get a job,” Paginelle muttered under her breath.
Her father’s eyes flashed. “I beg your pardon, what did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“No no, repeat what you said,” her father commanded, flapping his hand impatiently. “You probably aren’t going to make me more cross than I already am, so you may as well just go ahead and tell me.” His face darkened. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, my girl. Of any kind. That is why our house can continue to be as productive as it is. Now speak.”
Paginelle drew a deep breath and released it. She really had no idea what had possessed her to speak so insolently. On any other day, she wouldn’t have dared utter such words, but on that day for whatever reason….
“What I suggested,” she said carefully, “was that … was that it might be helpful—for us—if you got a job, too—”
“If I ‘got a job, too’?” her father snapped. “If I got a job, too? Have you gone mad, child? Such nonsense you speak! If I were to devote my hours to slaving away in the service of some—some peasant’s middling vision, how in the world would I ever be able to realize my genius?”
“You could wake up really early,” Paginelle blurted before she could stop herself. “And stay up really late—”
“Oh, of course!” her father hissed. “Wake up really early and stay up really late. Because my projects are a hobby now!”
“Papa, that is not what I—”
“Ah, but it is not a question of what you meant, is it, my girl. It is a question of how you are perceived. And believe me when I say, it is with great offense!”
“But, Papa—”
“Look around you, child. What do you see?”
“Um—”
“I shall tell you what you see: notebooks filled with ideas that’s scope and originality could have only come from a mind as singular and unblemished as mine. You also see machines—such magnificent machines!—that fall under the same category. Do you honestly believe I would have been able to create even a fraction of this if I had not been able to devote the entirety of my being?”
Paginelle remained silent. She knew what had to be said next, but didn’t think she had the strength to say it.
“Out with it,” her father grumbled.
Paginelle blinked. “Wh-what?”
“You’d like to offer a retort,” her father grunted, sliding the well-nibbled end of his pipe between his lips and lighting it after one shaky strike of a match. “I’ve known you for fifteen years,” he said as velvety smoke wafted to the ceiling. “I’m well-aware of when you’re itching to offer a retort.”
Paginelle’s cheeks burned and the words that needed to be said strained to leap from her throat; however, she knew that she didn’t have the strength for the argument they would surely ignite.
“Well?” her father pressed.
“I’d like to go to school,” Paginelle said, though she wasn’t sure where that one had come from.
Her father’s lip curled with disgust. “Why would you want something like that? We both know I’ve a far superior intellect to any of the morons running those wastrel institutions. Why would you even entertain such an idea?”
“I want to be around other people my age,” Paginelle said. She really didn’t know why she was still talking. “I—I want to have friends.”
Her father’s eyes narrowed. “What have I told you about friendship, child? Time and again, what have I told you?”
“That friendship,” Paginelle said quietly, “is overrated. That it … it makes one derivative.”
“Lord in Heaven,” her father said as he gnawed on his pipe. “It seems my words haven’t gone whistling through your ears, after all. Which begs the question of what we’re even doing here. Why have you decided to fill my afternoon with nonsensical prattling? We shouldn’t be wasting time debating whether or not the preservation of your intellect is a worthwhile endeavor. We should be figuring out how we’re going to make money. Unless you’d prefer to live on the street?”
“Papa, I already told you I wasn’t fire—”
Her father held up a hand for silence. “Who,” he said, “is that?”
Paginelle turned her head just as Alexandra Frost stepped forward.
“I’ve only school French, unfortunately,” Frost said brightly, in English, “but I’m fairly certain I was able to understand the question.”
“Who are you?” Paginelle’s father said in cold, cold English, “and what are you doing in my house?”
“I,” Frost said, holding out a black, leather-gloved hand, “am Alexandra Frost. And you must be Paginelle’s father. Ooo, you’ve even the same color eyes!”
Paginelle’s eyes, as well as those of her father, were a pale rose in color. Everybody in the Babineaux family had rose-colored eyes, and as far as Paginelle knew, there wasn’t a single non-Babineaux in the entire world who could lay claim to this trait. In the deep, dark past, the eyes had inspired all manner of bumpkin and zealot to accuse the Babineaux of being everything from witches to demons, and as a consequence, many in the family had faced the pyre.
“I’ve always thought,” Frost said, “that Nelle’s eyes were the perfect fit, as they matched her strawberry fudge.”
“You said your name was Frost?” Paginelle’s father said impatiently.
“Alexandra Frost,” Frost clarified. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Paginelle’s father lightly took her hand and gave it a single cautious shake. “Frost,” he muttered. “As in, the family who employed my daughter?”
“As in, the family who employs your daughter,” Frost corrected. “Present tense.” Then, quickly: “But perhaps not in the way you’re thinking.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Paginelle’s father.
“Well,” said Frost, her overbite poking over her lip, “my father hired Nelle as a sort of … lady’s companion. I’m obviously not a lady, but that’s basically what it was. However, our dynamic has changed: now we’re friends!”
Mr. Babineaux’s eyes flickered to Paginelle. “Friends.”
“Friends!” said Frost.
“Go to your room, Paginelle,” said Mr. Babineaux.
Paginelle blinked. “Wait, what? But I didn’t even—”
“You have a guest,” her father said coolly. “It doesn’t suit you, being a lousy host. Take Alexandra to your room so that you both can sit. Chat. Relax. You know—do as friends do.”
Paginelle squinted at him. This from the man who called friendship “overrated”, and claimed that it made one “derivative”.
“Well?” said her father. “Why are you still standing there? Are you waiting until you’ve both got swollen legs?”
“I, for one,” Frost chirped, “am wholeheartedly against developing swollen legs.” She hooked her arm with Paginelle’s and said, “Come, come, Nelle. Your room awaits and I’m sure I’d love to see it.”
Many thanks for reading(!) And now, on to Chapter 5….
Or,
if you liked what you read, and would like to devour a completed work in one go, why not give my romantic novella, Knits, a gander? Get it here.
